Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Open Source and business thoughts

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Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
Michael, it would be sad if you are right with your opinion. That's why I said the companies involved with OpenACS should start working together instead of seperatly, especially in the areas of marketing. To make just one example:
I will go to the german linux conference, talking about knowledge management solutions for the future. This is sponsored by AD. What will I do ?
  • Talk about Knowledge Management in general.
  • Promote the ACS as a plattform for knowledge management.
  • Promote ArsDigita as a company (at least in Germany) which knows how to handle KM within large corporations.
  • Talk about OpenACS as a community which supports ACS for lower budget companies and non profits (and universities).
My point is, I'm not going to put my own kind of business into the foreground. It's AD for large companies and OpenACS as a PRODUCT for smaller enterprises. So, if you go out and have the opportunity to talk to people, don't talk about your own business (yes, I know it is important and you poured your blood into it), talk about OpenACS and it's community. Get people interested in the Open Source idea. And if they check it out and think, gosh that's the way to go, they will first come back to you and ask you if you could help them with their web based solution (not someone else in the community).

Maybe I'm too idealistic, but I've seen enough money generated out of virtual networks, who promote their JOINED services. We don't need to convince venture capitalists that our service based approach is better than a product based approach. And last but not least, our competitors are not within the community. It's not even AD. It is everyone else, who is not using the (Open-)ACS as the plattform for building webbased services.

Know where your enemies are, and give us the Business BBoard.